Category: Shiraz

I have been watching and tasting Yalumba‘s organic tier of wines for a few years.  This year, I noticed “GEN” on the label. From the 2022 vintage, all Yalumba GEN wines will be Sustainable Winegrowing Australia (SWA) certified. Yalumba GEN is 100% certified organic (by Australian Certified Organic) meaning they use no chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides in their vineyard…

Do you like solving puzzles and deciphering secret codes?  If so, you should check out the labels from Michael David Winery, coming from Lodi, California.  Their labels have always been quirky and easy to spot on the BC Liquor Store shelves.  Plus you get big, juicy red wines.  Great for BBQ season.  I was fortunate to have a chance to…

Do you look for vegan wines? They are becoming more common. I have two vegan-friendly wines for you from Yalumba in Australia. I tasted their Yalumba Organic Shiraz 2019 and Yalumba The Y Series Viognier 2020. Both are single varietal wines, but sometimes you do see these grapes co-fermented. The Shiraz, besides being vegan-friendly, is also organic. A year ago…

No cute animal wine labels on these wines from Australia.  I attended the Cool-Climate Wave at Cornucopia featuring the wines of Yering Station and Xanadu by the Rathbone Wine Group. Rathbone’s Douglas Elliott leads this guided tasting of select wines from the family-owned wineries. There were five Chardonnay, two Cabernet Sauvignon, one Shiraz, and one Pinot Noir for us to…

Oxford Landing is a winery located along the Murray River in South Australia’s Riverland. It has a long history, started in 1958 by Wyndham Hill-Smith (a past winemaker at Yalumba) where he was the first to plant Cabernet Sauvignon in the Riverland, an area with a Mediterranean climate, plenty of sunshine, fertile red soil, and the longest single river in…

The theme region for the Vancouver International Wine Festival was the South American wine making countries, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Brasil. I’ve covered two wines from Chile in my earlier article, and I do have a few wines from Argentina coming up to taste and write about, as part of my tribute to the Festival. But today I am going…

Welcome to Round 2 of my Evolve Cellars and Cheese Pairing experience. In the first round I compared Evolve Cellars’ Viognier and Sauvignon Blanc 2018 paired with aged cheddar and brie cheese. You can see the results here. This time I’m comparing Evolve Cellars Pinot Gris 2018 with Evolve Cellars Shiraz 2016. I’ve added a cheese to the comparison, so…

You may say that 1990 was when South African wine came on the international scene.  That is the year that Nelson Mandela was released and sanctions against South Africa were subsequently lifted.  Before that time South African wines were made in a style that pleased the South Africa palate.  But opening their wines up to the world and a more…

1847 was an important year in Australian wine as two things happened. First John Gilbert who moved from Britain to Australia planted Riesling and other grapes in the Eden Valley in what is known as the Pewsey Vale Vineyard.  This vineyard had 3 generations of Gilbert’s grow grapes till it was sold in the 1920’s, and then again in 1962…

Wines come in all categories from inexpensive to ultra-expensive, with associated levels of quality.  But there are exceptions, such as when a wine delivers higher quality than the price point.  Have you ever tried wines from South Africa?  South Africa has been producing wines longer than some Old World wineries yet is viewed as New World, like Canada, the USA…